Using information from a suite of telescopes, astronomers have discovered a mysterious, giant object that existed at a time when the universe was only about 800 million years old. Objects such as…

An international team of astronomers has used the world's biggest radio telescope to look deep into the brightest galaxies that NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope can see. The study solidifies…

Take that, Taliban.   Western decadence, in the form of caring about beauty and nature, has infested your fundamentalist madness and it's here to stay. We are talking about Band-i-Amir national…

Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have discovered a potential chink in the armor of fibers that make the cell walls of certain inedible plant materials so tough. The insight ultimately could…

Researchers know that animals which seem identical can actually belong to completely different species.   But if it's worms used in laboratory testing, that could be important news in research.…

WHAT: New research from Baylor College of Medicine indicates a positive effect of chewing gum on academic performance in teenagers. The study examined whether chewing Wrigley sugar-free gum can lead…

A new study reveals that asteroid surfaces age and redden much faster than previously thought — in less than a million years, the blink of an eye for an asteroid.  The solar wind is the likely…

Waves from Daphnis Undulations mark both sides of the path of Saturn's moon Daphnis through the A ring.  Daphnis may be small at only 8 kilometers (5 miles) across, but the moon's gravity is…

Utah and Texas researchers have learned how quiet sounds are magnified by bundles of tiny, hair-like tubes atop “hair cells” in the ear: when the tubes dance back and forth, they act as…

At the European Geophysical Union EGU, Jochen Zschau from GeoForschungZentrum GFZ in Germany presented his Sergey Soloviev medal lecture, Meeting the Challenge of Earthquake Risk Globalisation:…

There are a lot of biologists out there with physics and engineering envy, and it shows in the occasional awkward and sometimes downright ridiculous borrowing of terminology. Take the term…

Every type of disease has a specific treatment program. We have drugs to treat symptoms of countless illnesses and maladies, but viral infections continue to elude treatment. While we have vaccines…

For those of us who are savvy on health food, what I’m about to tell you will come as no surprise, if not, hold onto your hats. If you have heard about “good fats” such as poly-unsaturated fats and…

Just in case you didn't know, Scientific Blogging geek fave Garth Sundem will make a guest appearance on The Early Show (your local CBS channel) tomorrow AM, in promotion of his new book.  …

"Kepler is like Field of Dreams meets Cosmos" says Padi Boyd, a scientist with the Kepler planet-hunting mission. This set the stage for an enjoyable short interview. Earlier I wrote why Kepler is…

For your Tuesday morning meditation:  what do you get when you cross the Mandelbrot set with Eastern religion? Buddhabrot: Melinda Green made this amazing picture, has more on her website, plus…

(I'm quite tired now, but just wanted to note this down.  This ain't science; it's just a diary.) As it says in my profile, I'm a volunteer part-time fossil preparator for the Dallas Museum of…

A team of astronomers from University College London (UCL) have discovered that an exotic world passes directly in front of the Sun-like star it orbits, revealing for the first time that it is about…

Exoplanet researcher Michel Mayor today announced the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, Gliese 581 e, in the famous system Gliese 581, is only about twice the mass of our…

Want to hunt down enemy bacteria?   Look at the sugars on the germs' surface where they start building a 'structure' that helps the microbes resist efforts to kill them. Scientists have…